I think I love you
by LaviniaRose1
Summary: Scorpius Malfoy, along with his partner James Potter, is one of Britain's top Aurors. He is also one of Britain's most eligible bachelors, with women falling over each other to get to their perfect wizard. Life isn't all sunshine and daisies though, with long days and dark wizards to catch, he barely has time to think. But when he does, he only has one girl on his mind... Lily.
1. Chapter 1

_Of course, I must let you all know that I do not own any of the characters in this story that you may recognise. I'm just writing for fun, and I hope you enjoy my stories as much as I am enjoying writing them. Please review : ) Any advice is welcome!_

_C xxxx_

**Chapter 1**

Scorpius sat at the bar of the Leaky Cauldron nursing a fire whiskey as he thought about the events of the day. He'd had a tough twelve hour shift at work and he felt he deserved every drop of the amber liquid that passed his lips. Looking up, he saw the Landlady, Hannah Longbottom heading towards his end of the bar, so he drained the rest of the contents of his glass and set it down in front of him hoping she would provide him with a refill; she took the hint and came over to retrieve the glass. "You'd better have a day off tomorrow if you're going to carry on downing these as fast love" Hannah said with a wink to show she was only playing with him.

Just as Hannah passed Scorpius his change, the stool next to him slid away from the bar and James Potter almost collapsed on to it. "I'll be needing one of those too I think Hannah," he said. "In fact, make it a double."

Scorpius glanced at the dark haired man now sat next to him. James Potter was a perfect mix of his parents. He had inherited the chocolate eyes of his mother and the jet black hair of his father; though he seemed to be able to tame it in a way that neither his father nor brother ever could. Although he was around the same height as his father, he had never been quite as skinny and had the arms of a brilliant Beater, which was the position he played when he played for his school house team, just like his Uncles George and Fred Weasley. Despite the obvious exhaustion that showed on his face at that moment, James still managed to keep his trademark grin plastered on his face.

"I see enough of you at work, do you have to follow me in here too?" Scorpius grumbled.

"Come on Malfoy, you know you'd miss my constant presence if it was suddenly taken away from you."

"Mmm, like a hole in the head," Scorpius muttered, earning him a punch on the arm. "Ow! Git, there is no need for such violence."

James chuckled at Scorpius' look of mock outrage, "You deserved that."

Despite their verbal sparring, Scorpius and James were actually very good friends. They had met when Scorpius started on the Auror training programme straight out of Hogwarts. As part of a second year assignment, James had been required to make sure some of the first years were up to scratch on their basic defensive spells. Scorpius had been one of the group assigned to James, and had been in a very bad mood when it came round to his turn to demonstrate his knowledge of defensive spells. James had managed to break through one of Scorpius' shield charms, and of course Scorpius just had to retaliate and the two ended up having a duel in the middle of the training room. When a particularly brave first year trainee had managed to split the two up, they had glared at each other for a full minute before they both fell about laughing. Having witnessed a fairly intense duel between the pair only moments before, the rest of the room were rightfully confused as to why they were now laughing their heads off.

Eventually James had said "That was great fun, you really know your hexes Malfoy."

"Yeah, you too Potter, I didn't know you had it in you."

"You'd be surprised at what I know." James had replied with a gleam in his eye.

That had been five years ago, and ever since, James and Scorpius met up quite regularly to practice their defence skills. They had gotten to know each other almost as well as they knew themselves, and although nobody ever would have believed it, a Potter and a Malfoy had become the best of friends.

"Dad sent me to find you actually," James said after he had taken a large swig of his drink. "He says that if you come in tomorrow, he'll give you two days off next week."

"No" Scorpius stated firmly as soon as James had finished talking.

"Why not?" James questioned.

"I've worked solidly for two weeks, I need tomorrow or I might crack up."

"Aww, come on Scor, I already agreed to go in. You can't leave me on my own with Palmer. I might end up killing him... Or worse, I might end up actually liking the guy!" The horror on James's face almost made Scorpius laugh and he took a sip of whiskey to try and hide the amusement. "Besides, dad also said to tell you that he also promises not to get mad if you ever decide to pluck up the courage to ask my sister out." This caused Scorpius to start chocking on his drink.

As James calmly smacked him on the back, Scorpius spluttered, "He what? Y...Your dad... said that?"

"Well, no, I made that bit up, but Merlin Scor, when are you going to quit this shy guy act and get it over with already?"

Scorpius scowled "you're her brother. Aren't you supposed to stop blokes, especially older ones, getting anywhere near her?"

James just shrugged. "Rather it be someone I know than some git with his brain in his dick."

"Like you, you mean?" This earned Scorpius another punch on the arm.

"Oi! I resent that comment! I'm the perfect gentleman, thank you very much."

Scorpius snorted. He had been witness to James Potter, Witch charmer extraordinaire, on several occasions.

"Come on Scor, come in to work tomorrow and I'll pay for your Cannons ticket when we go see them on our day off next week."

Scorpius knew there was no point in arguing with James when he was set on something. Besides, he did have a point about the whole killing Jack Palmer thing. The bloke was an idiot who managed to mess up nearly every case he was assigned to. Scorpius tended to have a little more patience than James, so he was usually able to calm James down when he set off on one of his rants.

"Fine." Scorpius said, giving in. "But don't think I'll let you forget about those tickets!"

"Great stuff! Now, how do you think we should go about bringing this McNair git in for questioning?"

"James, do we have to talk shop? I came here to get a drink and forget about work for a few hours, and that's what I intend to do!"

"Touchy aren't we today Scor? Think we need to get you laid." James said in all seriousness while looking around the room for a potential one night stand. "What about those two over there? I call the brunette."

Scorpius followed the direction of James's gaze and his grey eyes landed on a pair of Witches laughing in the corner. One of the girls, the one James had just claimed by the looks of things, had brown hair, large eyes and full lips that were currently carrying far too much lipstick. The other had red hair, pale skin and natural, understated make up. She reminded him of Lily Potter slightly; fairly pretty, though she didn't quite have the natural beauty that the youngest Potter radiated and rendered Scorpius speechless on several occasions. Scorpius had never had any trouble attracting the attention of the female population with his wide, grey eyes and silver-blonde hair. He never really had any trouble when it came to charm either; he always knew exactly what to say to a woman to have her swooning at his feet. The only exception seemed to be Lily Potter. He had absolutely no idea what it was about the girl that had him acting like a shy school boy whenever she was around. Of course James had picked up on this and found it highly amusing, making it the subject of many a joke at Scorpius' expense.

As he thought about it, he was beginning to see the appeal of letting off a bit of steam after a long day at work.

"What time does your dad want us in tomorrow?" Scorpius asked.

"Ten." James replied.

"Great," Scorpius said as he drained his glass and asked for four of Hannah's speciality dragon eye cocktails. "Plenty of time to get home and changed before we have to be at the Ministry."

James grinned at the wink Scorpius threw his way and followed Scorpius over to the two girls in the corner with two cocktails in hand.

"Ladies, may we join you?" James asked. The brunette blushed and said "Sure" while patting the seat beside her. Scorpius sat himself next to the redhead and offered her a smile that would turn any female's legs to jelly.

Tonight certainly promised to end well for the both of them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Scowling at the large pile of papers sat on his desk, Scorpius dropped into his chair and picked up the coffee James had left there for him. Just as Scorpius contemplated how his best friend could possibly have so much energy on a morning, James came bounding in to the cubicle with a huge grin on his face.

"Good night?" He asked with a wink.

Scorpius just grunted in reply and took a large gulp of his coffee.

"Tell me you actually took her home!"

"'Course I did," Scorpius scoffed. "Left this morning." Truth was he had snuck out while the redhead still slept. That was how he always liked to leave them. He gave out as little information about himself as possible, he always went back to their bed, and he always left before they woke.

Contrary to popular belief, Scorpius was actually quite a private person; not many people actually knew the real man behind the handsome face and persona he displayed to the public. James was one of those few, but Scorpius had never let a girl get to know him too well, and vice versa in fact. He had always had a fear of getting hurt if he let somebody become too involved in his life.

"Well then why are you so grumpy this morning?" James questioned.

"It's Saturday morning Potter and I'm up before dinnertime when I should be sleeping off a huge hangover... Besides, she was a bit whiney." Scorpius grumbled before downing the rest of his coffee in one go. "Thanks for the coffee by the way."

"Oh it was no problem at all" James said.

"No problem at all because he sent me to get it!" stated a voice Scorpius was not expecting to hear.

Lily Potter strolled into Scorpius' cubicle with another large pile of papers which she dumped unceremoniously on to his desk before punching her brother's arm.

"Ow! Lils, what was that for?" James moaned rather theatrically while rubbing his arm.

"That was for trying to pass off my kindness as your own." She retorted before sticking her tongue out at him childishly. "Dad says he wants you to look through these files before you report to him at 1pm sharp. I'm going home now for some sleep." She then said to Scorpius through a huge yawn. "I'll tell you what, I cannot wait to qualify so I don't have to do all these silly night shifts; they make me wish I'd taken a nine-to-five desk job sometimes!" She waved lightly before she swept out of the cubicle.

Scorpius sat staring at the space Lily had just exited through. He had no idea what it was about the girl that had caught his attention three years ago when she first walked in to the Auror department, but he had been trying to work it out ever since. Yes, she was pretty, not the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, but her beauty was understated; natural. She had striking dark red hair, and almond shaped hazel eyes, framed by thick long lashes. Her skin was pale with only a small scattering of faint freckles over her nose and cheeks. Her Auror training meant that she kept well toned but not too skinny, but there was one feature though that Scorpius knew he wasn't the only one to admire. He had heard many a comment from his co-workers about how Lily Potter possessed the finest arse in all of Britain; comments which had James frequently threatening to remove people's eyes for.

"Oi mate!" James shouted while clicking his fingers in front of his best friend's face. "Snap out of it. Big brother in the room remember." He added with slight humour in his voice.

Scorpius smirked at his friend. "Going back on what you said last night Potter?"

"Watch that smart mouth of yours, or I might well do that Malfoy." James warned. "Now, let's see what's in these reports; I'd quite like to have McNair in Azkaban by the end of the week."

They spent the next two and a half hours going through all the information they had on Tobias McNair. His uncle had been a Death Eater, however his own parents had managed to stay out of the war as much as possible. The McNair family on a whole were quite a well off pureblood family, who, with the exception of Tobias' uncle, had rarely ever been in trouble with the law. Scorpius however, had a suspicion that many of the old English pure blood families had exceptional skills when it came to covering their tracks based on some of the stories he had heard from his father as a child.

Over the past ten years, there had been a number of attacks on Muggles and the attacker had never been identified. The attacks were similar in some ways; having all been performed on Muggles who could not remember a thing about what had happened to them, however, they were different enough to present the possibility that they were performed by different wizards, so the ministry had never been able to pin the attacks on a single member of the magical community. Of course, there was also the problem that, as the victims were all Muggle, there was not a lot the ministry could do to break through the heavy memory charms that had been placed on each of them to conceal the identity of the attacker. Having too much magic performed on them could have a detrimental effect on any one of the victims' sanity, not to mention the extent at which it would break the International statute of Wizarding Secrecy Law.

The reason they were currently researching Tobias McNair's history was because of an anonymous tip off, but they couldn't bring the guy in for questioning with no other reason for doing so. It would also make for a very short interview if they didn't find out as much as possible to link him to the crimes. The trouble was that although there were several reports of people having their suspicions about the very private family, there were no actual eye witness accounts to prove any family members had been involved in anything sinister.

"Urgh, this is useless," James said as he threw down the report on an attack on a 25 year old woman that had occurred five years previously, "Let's get something to eat; I'd much prefer to hand our useless backsides over to the boss on a full rather than an empty stomach."

Privately, Scorpius agreed that their research was in fact useless, but he had never been one to give up so easily. He was however starving and in dire need of another coffee as the effects of the last one had worn off some time ago, so he agreed and followed James to the canteen.

They had just arrived back in Scorpius' cubicle with their sandwiches when Harry Potter himself walked in. "Food down boys, we have a lead. "

"What do you mean?" James asked sounding rather annoyed at being interrupted during lunch.

"It means you have work to be doing because there has been another attack; except this time, they chose someone who happens to be a Squib who is known to the ministry."

"You're joking!" Scorpius gasped.

"Nope! We've managed to get him moved to St Mungo's and I'd like you both to go down there to be present while the specialist Healers try to recover the victim's memory."

"On it boss!" Scorpius and James said as they jumped up and saluted in exact time with each other. They grabbed their sandwiches and cloaks and rushed out of the cubicle, leaving a chucking Harry behind them.


	3. Chapter 3

_Hello my lovely readers. Apologies for the wait, but I've finally managed to get this chapter done. It's more of a "for your information" chapter really, so sorry if it's a little boring. Sometimes these things need to be done though! xxx_

**Chapter 3**

"Is it just me?" James moaned, "Or is all this waiting around getting really boring?"

Scorpius rolled his eyes at his partner. He'd lost count of the amount of times he'd heard something to the same effect over the past three hours. If he was being honest with himself, he had expected the healers to have made a lot more progress on uncovering their witness's memories by now, but unfortunately they hadn't really uncovered much at all.

"You know if you actually did something other than just sit there and moan, time might pass a little bit quicker." James scowled at this and Scorpius raised his hands in surrender. "Hey, just a suggestion mate."

Scorpius went back to reading his newspaper, but a Healer walked into the room not five minutes later.

"Now then gentleman," the tall, dark haired Healer said to them. "We appear to have uncovered something that may be of use to you."

"Finally," James muttered under his breath, which the Healer rather professionally ignored.

"If you would like to follow me, I'll take you to the observation room. We believe it would be better for the Healers to do the questioning so as to avoid upsetting the patient any further. The process involved in uncovering memories is quite strenuous, and the patient may become distressed if pushed too much."

Scorpius and James followed the Healer into a small room with a large glass window along one wall. On the other side of the glass there was a small group of Healers gathered around a young woman who was sat up on a bed. The patient looked to be in her mid twenties with long dark hair and large dark eyes, and she looked rather pale and a little confused.

"How is she?" Scorpius asked the Healer.

"At the moment she will be exhausted, but we managed to heal all her wounds without complication, so after some rest she should be fine."

Scorpius nodded his understanding and turned to look through the glass once more. A few of the Healers left the room, leaving one female, who conjured a straight backed chair with her wand and sat beside the patient.

The Healer explained to the patient that she would ask some questions, and she apologised if any questions were repeated; they just needed to be sure of all the details.

Scorpius and James sat in the observation room and took notes as the young woman recounted all that she could remember.

It turned out that the girl had met a man who looked to be in his thirties in a bar in London. The man had been really kind to her and they had talked for a couple of hours before he offered to walk her home. She had described him as being around six feet tall and very slim, with messy copper coloured hair and grey eyes. The girl had invited him up to her flat for coffee, but while she was making the drink, something strange had happened to her. The girl had felt like she was no longer in control of her own thoughts and actions, and although her memories were patchy, she remembered cutting herself with one of her kitchen knives and doing things to the man that she had trouble repeating because she was so embarrassed. The last thing she remembered was climbing up on to the railing of her balcony. It turned out that the girl had been found lying in the front garden of the block of flats she lived in. It appeared that somebody had cast a cushioning charm as the girl jumped from the balcony, but the impact was still bad enough to have caused her to break both of her ankles. Once she had finished her account, the girl had become rather hysterical, and the Healers had to intervene to calm the girl down and had decided to put her into a dreamless sleep.

The dark haired Healer returned to the observation room once the patient had settled. "I am afraid it is unlikely we will be able to recall any more information from the patient's memories once she wakes up. It is often the case in traumatic situations such as these that the patient shuts certain memories away in order to protect themselves from any further psychological harm. It appears that, although the patient is a squib, she has been living in the muggle world for so long that she had managed to convince herself that magic didn't really exist. Her parents died when she was still very young, and it was easier for her to pretend that she was a muggle."

Scorpius nodded as he made a few more notes and James thanked the Healer for all their work.

"Thanks for everything. The victim's description certainly matches the suspect's profile; all we need to do now is track down the fucker!" Scorpius rolled his eyes at this; James always did have a way with words.

As they walked back through the Ministry, James said, "Dad better give us a promotion when we're done with this case! It's taken years off me already!"

"Oh stop being so dramatic James," Scorpius replied. "We haven't done much other than trawl through a massive pile of past investigations so far. All I want is a nice long holiday and a break from paperwork for a couple of months."

"You know, I wasn't expecting the sexual assault. I thought these pure blood bastards were all about treating muggles as less than human." James said.

"Hmmm," Scorpius hummed thoughtfully. "I'm beginning to think this isn't about being pure blood. I think he might actually be just a sick bastard who's doing this for fun, coz if you think about it; what better way to get away with a Wizarding crime than to attack muggles. Easier to cover your tracks, and he has been getting away with it for the past decade."

"Ahh yes, but that was before they put us on the case. Tobias McNair is going to wish he was never born once I'm done with him." James snarled as he punched one fist into the palm of his other hand.

Scorpius rolled his eyes for the third time that day as he knocked on the door of Harry Potter's office. As much as he loved his best friend, and as brilliant as he was at his job; he didn't half over exaggerate at times.

"Come in!" Harry called from inside his office. The two men entered the room and were met by their rather harassed looking boss. "You two had better be here with good news because I've about had it with incompetent staff today."

"Hello to you too Boss!" Scorpius grinned. "We're just about to make your day."


End file.
